When cooking foods, such as hamburgers, steaks, pancakes, or the like, on a grill, commercial food serving establishments strive for two primary objectives; the first being taste and visual appeal, and the second being speed of preparation. The second consideration assumes greater importance, of course, in the so-called fast food establishments. As a result, there have heretofore been provided a veritable plethora of automated and conveyor-fed devices for cooking food products, and especially hamburgers, on both sides at once. Merely represenative of such prior art devices are those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,646,880 and 3,739,712.
While automated devices of the type alluded to may well have increased output and efficiency of operation, they have also been characterized by numerous problems and disadvantageous features. The most obvious problems related to initial cost and to the difficulty of proper maintenance and upkeep of such intricate and complex machines. Of equal important, perhaps, has been the sacrifice in quality, either real or imagined, of the finished food product. For whatever reasons, the great majority of food establishments still prefer cooking their food products in the old-fashion way, on a stationary grill.
Of course, the cooking of food products on a conventional grill has its own problems and drawbacks. To begin with, the process takes longer and an attendant is required to turn the food products over for cooking on the second side. Those problems can become particularly worrisome when high output is required and a substantial number of products are being cooked at the same time.
Additional problems encountered relate to the effects of heat and cooking on certain food products. For example, it is well known that a hamburger patty shrinks during cooking, the amount of shrinkage depending on a number of factors such as meat content, fat content, cooking temperature and contact with cooking surface. In addition to shrinkage, hamburger patties and other foods have a tendency to curl or shrivel up. Unless restraining pressure is applied directly to the cooking food products, the resulting product can be most visually unappealing. These problems have likewise been recognized by those skilled in the art and efforts have been made to cope with them. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,620,156 teaches a toaster device for hamburger buns having biasing means for applying pressure to the toasting buns to compensate for shrinkage and minimize sticking to the cooking platens.
Clearly, there exists a need for a means of improving and increasing the capabilities and efficiency of conventional single-surface cooking grills. More specifically, there exists a need for a means to readily and selectively convert a conventional cooking grill to a double-surface grill.